Bitcoin hit $69,000 after Donald Trump said he would have a strategic crypto reserve. During a speech at the 2024 Nashville Bitcoin Conference on Saturday Trump announced that if elected,
“It will be the policy of my administration to keep 100 percent of all bitcoin the US government currently holds or acquires in the future … as a core of the strategic national bitcoin stockpile.”
Currently, the U.S. government owns more than 210,000 bitcoins that were seized due to a Ponzi scheme called Bitconnect. Those coins are valued at roughly $14 billion.
Trump also said he could not allow any effort to create a Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC).
According to Wired, Trump’s running mate, J.D. Vance is also a crypto fan and reported owning between $100,000 and $150,000 in crypto in 2022. Trump has received $4 million worth of cryptocurrencies in campaign donations.
Crypto Goes Mainstream
All of this positive news added about $5,000 onto the price of Bitcoin over the weekend. However, companies that will benefit from the higher price which include crypto miners like Marathon Digital (MARA – full disclosure: I own Marathon Digital) and Cleanspark (CLSK) are down today.
This is odd because Marathon announced on July 25 that:
“It has purchased $100 million of bitcoin and currently holds over 20,000 BTC on its balance sheet. Furthermore, effective immediately, MARA will adopt a full HODL approach towards its bitcoin treasury policy, retaining all bitcoin mined in its operations, and will periodically make strategic open market purchases.
“Adopting a full HODL strategy reflects our confidence in the long-term value of Bitcoin,” said Fred Thiel, MARA’s chairman and CEO. “We believe bitcoin is the world’s best treasury reserve asset and support the idea of sovereign wealth funds holding it. We encourage governments and corporations to all hold Bitcoin as a reserve asset.”
Mind you, this was before the Trump speech. Furthermore, MARA is down 2.09% as I write this for no reason that I can discern other that a post-conference “sell the news” trade. CLSK is down 3.5% as well.
That said, the MARA five-year chart looks good. It has broken the down trend and is putting in higher highs and higher lows. That’s the definition of a bull market. The increasing volume is bullish as well.
MARA has a market capitalization of $6.10 billion. Earnings grew 184% yoy off a slow year. The company has $324 million in cash so it could buy more on the open market. And get this, the float is 27% short which could set up a massive short squeeze.
Toss in the fact that bitcoin peaks about 18 months after halving, and Trump is talking about a strategic crypto reserve, this looks like a great entry point. In fact, I’m going to buy some more.
All the best,
Christian DeHaemer
P.S. Don’t forget that crypto and AI are both energy hogs. Energy companies have sold off about 30% due to high interest rates. These power companies are also defensive stocks – people buy them when the greater market sells off. They are teed up for a reversal and I’ll tell you all about them on Wednesday.
https://www.outsiderclub.com/google-ibm-and-bitcoin/
https://www.outsiderclub.com/the-big-ai-lie/
